


Reckless

by Zofiecfield



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this one for me but it is yours too if you need it, One Shot, narrator voice, with no happy ending - fair warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 12:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30072477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zofiecfield/pseuds/Zofiecfield
Summary: There are two sides to every story.  You've heard one.  This is the other.The story in which Dani doesn't choose company, doesn't choose to let Jamie love her.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 16
Kudos: 30





	Reckless

**Author's Note:**

> _A warning for those who need it: This story contains significant references to death, and to alcoholism and other methods of assisted self-harm. The author’s note following contains these as well, in addition to references to Huntington’s disease._

There are two sides to every story. 

One, the _what was_. 

The other, the _what might have been_. 

Not the dream nor the wish, nor the re-written. No. The other is the story that splits off from the first, to travel a road almost parallel, so close you might reach out and trail your fingers across its skin.

You’ve heard one. This is the other. 

The gardener offered her littlest finger in a promise of days to come, in a promise of company in the frightening jungle. 

And at first, the au pair accepted. At first, that promise was a single light to cling to in the darkness, and she clung.

Days passed and the gardener did not falter. She remained by the au pair’s side, steady and sure. _One day at a time,_ she said, and it sounded, for a time, like something the au pair could believe.

But the gardener was alive and the au pair was dying. 

Winter now, but spring would come and the gardener would bloom, but the au pair would not. The dirt would take her and the cold would sink in, and the warmth of May would not revive her. 

Maybe not this spring, nor the next, nor the next, but some spring coming. 

And the gardener knew this well. No chorus of softness could hide the understanding in her eyes. She knew perfectly well that the au pair would not join her in the days coming. She knew about the winter and about the spring.

The gardener knew this well, and her eyes were clear. 

So clear, in fact, that the au pair could see to their very depths. And beneath that understanding, beneath the acceptance of _temporary_ and inevitable solitude, there was something else.

There was love. Unspoken yet, but written there, so plainly that the au pair could not miss it, could not even pretend to miss it. 

Love, growing ever deeper by the day. Love that would not fade away with springtime, love that would persist. 

Love that would be there, just as steady, just as sure, when the au pair ceased to be.

Love that would gut the gardener like a hunting knife, held firm in the beast’s paw. Love that was gutting her now already, though the path of the knife was so sharp and so clean, the wound had yet to bleed in earnest. Just a sting now.

The gardener knew this all well, and still she stayed. Still, she loved.

And after a time, the au pair could not bear it.

The au pair drifted slowly. 

One step back, then a lean forward, tugged in by the lull and tide of the gardener and what could have been. 

Two steps back, fingertips starting to slip, even as the gardener held tight.

Three steps back and her vision accordioned down to nothing, because she did not want to go but she could not bear to stay.

The love never clouded, never wavered. 

It stayed.

And the au pair did not.

The gardener watched her go.

But that was not for many years.

The gardener watched her go, but first she railed against the au pair and her leaving. First, she tore into the distance between them and gave her every reason to stay. First, she flung her arms wide open and begged the au pair to turn back, to let them wrap her tightly and weigh her down against the storm.

For years. For years she railed and tore and begged.

But the au pair had settled into her path, had thrown down roots into it, too deep for the gardener to dislodge, though not for lack of trying.

The gardener laid her body to waste for those roots, bore the dirt under her broken fingernails for years to come.

And still the au pair went. 

Years went by and she went, and she did not come home.

So, after a time, the gardener watched her go.

There were days of hope at first, which turned to sorrow and grief like the sickening bile of a stomach gone sour. 

Days when the au pair appeared in the shop window, the shop the gardener had kept year in and year out for these very days. Days when the au pair leaned into the gardener and her softness, into the arms still straining wide. 

The gardener scrawled _home_ across her body in every language, tattooed it to her skin, but au pair couldn’t stay.

 _Wouldn’t_ stay.

The lines between the two blurred until the gardener couldn’t tell any longer, couldn’t see where the au pair’s agency ended and the unstoppable forces that dragged her under her began. 

Couldn’t, can’t, wouldn’t, won’t. Stay.

The au pair treated her body like it was already gone. 

She used it roughly and with no regard for its permanence, because to her, there was no permanence to be found. None at all. 

She took risks that didn’t need taking, risks she had to drag from the darkness with her bare hands and wrestle until they acquiesced, until they would be partner in her destruction.

She tore herself to pieces and watched the fragments burn.

The au pair felt the Beast at her back, and she ran. Not from the Beast, but with it.

She raced it to the finish line, dared it to catch up, dared it to win.

And through it all, the au pair remained good and kind and worthy. Good and kind and worthy, though she could not see them in her, could not (would not) believe in them. Though they were there on her skin the whole time, good and kind and worthy, and everyone else saw, but she did not.

The gardener told her, again and again, in words and touch, in a hundred thousand single moments and in an unending stream, that she was worthy. Worthy of the love, deep in the gardener’s eyes.

But the au pair did not believe. Could not, would not. 

The gardener dragged open her fists and laid love in her reluctant palms, the gift, the sacrifice freely and openly given. 

But to accept the gardener’s hurt, the hurt that would come beside the Beast, the hurt already coded into that love – it was too much. 

The au pair did not accept. Could not. Would not.

She loved the gardener fiercely, sure and always. Telegraphed it in her silences and in her distance, in the days the gravity pulled her into orbit for a moment, for a breath, for a rest, however briefly. 

She loved and was loved. _Good gods, was she loved_.

But she kept the distance between them. Held the gardener at bay and would not (could not) budge. 

Love and loved, but always a step outside the gardener’s reach, always just a bit too far to hold securely.

The earth shifted under her feet and the pavement betrayed her, but she let go of the gardener’s hand, every time.

And so, the gardener watched her go.

Because, as much as the au pair was the gardener’s, in the softest of ways,

as much as the gardener’s heart sang _mine_ and _yours_ and _whole_ and _worthy,_ from the first day to the last,

the au pair was not the gardener’s, not at all, really.

And, though the gardener fought the understanding for years, she understood.

So, she watched the au pair go,

but her arms remained outstretched and ever home.

The au pair flew farther and farther from the gardener as the years went by, returning only when the winds grew violent and vicious, only when her wings could no longer hold her aloft as the world battered and swept.

She returned to the gardener only rarely as the end crept closer. Months would go by. Then nearly a year.

And each time she fled from the gardener’s arms, each time she stayed only a moment, the gardener’s skin murmured _last, last, last_ , and her heart shuddered.

It knew too well, of endings, of beasts, of running.

One evening, not unlike this one, the gardener woke and knew.

The au pair had gone.

_Last, last, last._

She had run far enough, fast enough, with absolute abandon, and she had found the point where time agreed to consume her, where the earth dropped off and let her fall.

It was not the beast that took her in the end. Not the Beast, anyway, not the one who had claimed her years ago.

No, the Beast had run too slowly, and the au pair had outwitted it.

She had made her own beasts instead, raised them with her own two hands. She had made her own beasts, beasts that are familiar, beasts that roam wide and loose and take too many. 

Dirt roads and a distracted gaze. One drink too many. A foot on the gas and a dizzying song in her veins.

The gardener woke and knew.

And she was not surprised.

Sad and angry, furious. Roaring at the au pair, at the world that had dragged her under, the world that had demanded too much for the au pair to bear.

But she was not surprised.

And, in some ways, perhaps, in the only way that matters, it was a mercy.

The au pair was tumbling towards tragedy, towards the beasts and their snarling maws. 

It was, in some way, a mercy that she chose her beast. The world took her choices from her, gave her Beast and a single path, so she ripped at the seams and made her own. A path, and a choice.

The gardener woke and knew, and she was not surprised.

The au pair was gone too soon, far too soon, and it was a hurt the gardener would carry always. 

It would, in the days after, drag her down to the dirt she so cherished, force her face down until she inhaled it into her lungs and nearly drowned. 

But in days after those and the days after those and on and on, it would lighten some. 

And then, eventually, it would not be heavy any longer. It would weigh nothing at all. 

Her body would assume the weight as its own, and would carry it, perfectly twinned and seamlessly bound to the love that she promised so many years ago.

If you were to meet her, in the shop, or among the flower beds, you might see it. The grief and the love in their mirrored echo. 

Her eyes are clear and deep.

There are two sides to every story. 

Two sides, and still, a hundred thousand stories branching off from a hundred thousand moments, a hundred thousand chances. 

But only one story gets told. 

The others rest there, under the tongue and sharp behind the teeth. 

Some we turn from gladly, grateful that the text slipped past that particular version. We pat ourselves on the back and say our thanks. 

And some we hold close, some we tuck into ourselves and keep because they were so close and they would have been _other,_ just other enough to almost believe. Some we keep and tell ourselves until they are almost, almost, ours.

Either way, either story, the au pair lived recklessly. 

She loved with abandon, in one way or another, even though the grief was already written in, indelible and sure. 

She threw herself into the Jungle with teeth of her own, to race the Beast and claim an end that was of her own making, instead of the end that had been written for her by a hand that was not hers.

Reckless, either way. 

Hard tell them apart, those stories, really. The love and the teeth and recklessness, the ache that is left behind. The weight, too heavy to hold, too heavy to bear. 

Not so different, after all. 

There are two sides to every story,

but only one gets to be told.

**Author's Note:**

> __  
>  _This fic is a bit of processing for me. Here is the story, should you want to know:_
> 
> _A friend of mine passed away this week. I loved her dearly, from the moment we met, and will love her just as dearly for all the coming days._
> 
> _She had Huntington’s disease, which is, in nearly every way, a perfect mirror to Dani’s Beast in the Jungle._
> 
> _Huntington’s is a genetic disease, carried through the mother’s line, and has a 50% chance of being passed down to each child. There is no uncertainty in diagnosis – if you inherit the gene repetitions that result in the disease, you get the disease. It is fatal and there is no cure. The only uncertainty rests in the timing – the when and the how fast. Symptoms typically begin in a person’s 30s or 40s, show up with little notice, and can progress rapidly or slowly. The disease is devastating to the body and to the mind, and brings death in a year or ten or twenty-five._
> 
> _It is a beast in the jungle and there is no outrunning it. It comes when it comes, and it takes and takes and takes._
> 
> _My friend was young, in her early thirties, and she wasn’t symptomatic yet. She had time, but she didn’t know how much, she never knew how much. The Beast was coming, and she knew it, always._
> 
> _My friend didn’t die from Huntington’s. She died by wrapping her car around a tree one evening. She was bright and loving and endlessly kind, funny and a terrible flirt, and she chose to race the beast to the finish line, in every poor decision she made and every outstretched hand she chose to turn away from._
> 
> _She raced the beast, and I suppose, she won._
> 
> _She’s gone too soon, but “too soon” is a broken phrase in many ways. Too soon, is, in some ways, a mercy when the Beast and its maw is waiting, when the clock is ticking and legs are growing tired. When you’ve chosen to run._
> 
> _I wish she had let people love her like she deserved to be loved. I wish she hadn’t run. I wish she had let me, us, love her closely, instead of at the distance she kept. We accepted the weight of loving her, I accepted the weight, with the full and clear understanding of the grief that it would bring. But that was too much for her and she held us all at arm’s length._
> 
> _I wish she’d have chosen the path Dani’s story in THOBM depicts. I wish she’d found a way to feel light and whole and safe like that, even for a little while, even with the Beast at her back. But she chose instead to find lightness in the rapid fall._
> 
> _She chose to run, and that was her choice to make._
> 
> _The couldn’t and wouldn’t and shouldn’t’s are too blurry to parse through. She could have lived the different side of the story, but the ink was dark and indelible and to find the other side, to keep it for longer than a moment, was so hard for her. For a hundred thousand reasons, for the Beast and beasts and dense jungle she spent her life running through. A hundred thousand moments when could and would and should slipped through her fingers._
> 
> _THOBM presents a story that is, in many ways, extraordinary. But I think the fact that Dani chose to let Jamie love her is the most extraordinary part. Not Jamie’s love. Dani’s acceptance of it. That’s the part that floors me. That’s the part that almost feels like fiction to me. Not the ghosts, not the Beast. The recklessness of accepting that kind of reckless love. It isn’t fiction, of course. It happens all the time – we all carry beasts of the world and of our own making, and we choose to let people love us anyway. But on days like this, on days where that decision was too much, when the other side of the story got told instead, it feels like fiction._
> 
> _My friend is gone too soon. And it wasn’t the Beast that took her in the end, but the running, which isn’t much different, is it?_
> 
> _Just two sides of a story._


End file.
